Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — A movement to build generational wealth in Battle Creek’s African American community began on Saturday with a Community Townhall focused on Black Community Priorities.

Hosted by the Village Network of Battle Creek at Second Missionary Baptist Church, the event drew an audience of about 65 people who learned about a similar movement that began in Tulsa, Okla., in 1906.

At the time it wasn’t viewed as a movement, but rather a collective will to create a thriving community, which began with Ottawa W. Gurley’s purchase of 40 acres of land on which he built a grocery store and boarding house, with the remainder “only to be sold to colored.”

The property that Gurley purchased was the cornerstone of what would come to be known as Tulsa’s Greenwood District, later dubbed “Black Wall Street” by Booker T. Washington, says Chief Egunwale Amusan, who led Saturday’s town hall conversation.

“Booker T. stopped in Tulsa on his way to Muskogee and said he’d never seen so many black-owned businesses in one place in all of his life and he coined Black Wall Street,” says Amusan, author of the book “America’s Black Wall Street” which was optioned in November to be made into a movie.

Jane ParikhAttendees await the beginning of the Village Network's Community Townhall: Black Community Priorities on Saturday at Second Missionary Baptist Church.Amusan, a History Recovery Specialist, says he doesn’t particularly care for the Black Wall Street moniker because it isn’t an accurate reflection of the intentions that guided Greenwood’s creation.

“When I think of Black Wall Street, I think of Manhattan,” he says. “Greenwood was built on cooperative economics, not capitalism.”

Although there have been several books written about Greenwood and a bloody and violent massacre there in 1921 that killed more than 300 of its Black residents and left millions of dollars in property damage, Amusan is the only author to have relatives — a grandfather, uncle, and aunt — who survived that massacre. Historians refer to it as the Tulsa Race Massacre, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

“Believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, the bloody 1921 outbreak in Tulsa has continued to haunt Oklahomans,” according to a post on the Historical Society’s website. “During the course of eighteen terrible hours on May 31 and June 1, 1921, more than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed, while credible estimates of deaths range from fifty to three hundred. By the time the violence ended, the city had been placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held under armed guard, and the state's second-largest African American community had been burned to the ground.”

The massacre was driven by a mob of angry, white men. Through Amusan’s lens what happened was more than a massacre.

“When you murder thousands of people and put them in mass graves, that’s genocide, it’s mass murder. When you force them to live in tents, that’s ethnic cleansing,” Amusan says. “This was not done out of greed or jealousy. When people know you’re capable of anything, they will deprive you of everything.”

The Tulsa Massacre, he says, was a blueprint for the Jewish Holocaust while Greenwood was a blueprint for what is possible.

“It wasn’t an accident. It happened on purpose,” Amusan says.
 
Replicating a century-old model

The same principles that guided the creation of Greenwood will be incorporated into the creation of a Black Wall Street model in Battle Creek which will be named the Greenwood Economics Reemergence Plan and led by the Village Network.
Saturday’s conversation will be followed up with a communitywide strategy meeting from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Washington Heights United Methodist Church.

“We want to re-group and talk about what we’re going to do and hold each other accountable,” says Dr. L.E. Johnson, Senior Director for Inclusion and Diversity with the Village Network.

The initial meeting presented an opportunity to look back in history at a successful model, says Dr. Nakia Baylis, President and CEO of the Village Network.
This history, she says, represents a time “when our ancestors put together a model of generational wealth. As we look at what’s happening with DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) rollbacks, we’re not looking at deficits and unsustainability, but a sustainable and asset approach.”

Jane ParikhChief Egunwale Amusan, at left, with Dr. Nakia Baylis, President and CEO of the Village Network, center, and Dr. L.E. Johnson, Senior Director for Inclusion and Diversity with the Village Network, at right.She asked attendees to look at historical successes and resources available today and take those resources and adapt them to the Greenwood District success model and the opportunities that “we have.”

Most of Tulsa’s more than 10,000 African American residents lived in the Greenwood District, a vibrant neighborhood that was home to two newspapers, several churches, a library branch, and scores of Black-owned businesses, according to information on the Oklahoma Historical Society website.

Amusan says these more than 400 businesses included grocery stores, restaurants, and an airplane chartering service. They were located on a linear street that was the length of about 29 football fields that were one mile wide at certain points, all nestled within Tulsa.

“It was a city within a city,” Amusan says. “The Whites called it ‘Little Africa’. When I learned about this, I thought, ‘You just compared this district to a continent.”

Its success was due to Black residents supporting Black-owned businesses.
Johnson says, “Black folks and our allies can come together and change how we do business and change the future of our community.”

Part of that change will be driven by two newly-created websites — BWSonline.com and BWSonline.store that Johnson created and will manage as a separate endeavor from his work with the Village Network. Local, national, and international Black-owned businesses were able to begin registering on the website on Tuesday (April 1). Consumers can go online and begin purchasing.

“Consumers can go to those websites and start purchasing. By May 1 all of these businesses will have a digital storefront online where they can sell and market their products,” Johnson says. “By summertime, we’ll have our own delivery service to transport orders to customers. This is all leading up to 33 weeks of Buying Black which will go from Juneteenth all the way through Christmas.”

Johnson says he hasn’t always been good about spending his money in the city’s Black-owned business community which is expected to grow as more residents spend their money with those businesses.

During the gathering, he held up a glossy poster with images of some of Battle Creek’s Black business owners and their locations on The Village Loop. These posters were distributed to attendees to display.

Jane ParikhFrom L-R: Chief Egunwale Amusan, Dr. Nakia Baylis, and Dr. L.E. Johnson.Although this Loop map is new, he mentioned an initiative of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., that has been going on for years called the RED, Black, and Green Pages — a Black-owned business directory for businesses and nonprofit organizations in, and/or serving Calhoun County, MI.

“The RED, Black, and Green Pages aligns with the Economic Development Thrust of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., celebrates entrepreneurism, and encourages the support of independent Black-owned businesses and nonprofit organizations within our community,” says the Black Pages website.

Johnson says the Loop map is a way to operationalize the RED, Black, and Green pages and make it more tangible.
 
A movement that brings everyone along

For a long time, Baylis says she’s been grappling with a disconnect involving Black communities nationwide that fall on the low end demographically but have one of the highest purchasing frequencies.

Despite this purchasing power, “We own very little. How do we shift that and become owners who are economically powerful? How do we build economic power?,” she asks. “How do we build on models of success.”

While the Greenwood Economic Reemergence Plan will focus on the city’s Black community, Baylis says the Village Network supports all Communities of Color.

“People may ask, ‘Why start in the Black community? The Black community is a community of people and the most disadvantaged community and if we look at the historical context, beyond the Indigenous community, the Black community extends to Black people who were brought here and enslaved. We want to start with the most marginalized community and build a model that can be used by other communities. This will create Collective Independence.”

The idea is to bring everyone along on the journey to build generational wealth and a version of Black Wall Street that fits with the times, Baylis says.

“Right now, we’re not putting our money into our own communities,” she says. “We need to be more intentional about making this happen so that we can build wealth within our own communities.”